Web Application Development with COBOL

Micro Focus recommends that you use the COBOL Web Application templates in Visual Studio to create applications for the Web. You configure Web Applications from the project properties.

To create a Web application using a Web Application template:

1. In Visual Studio, click File > New > Project.
2. In the Create a new project dialog box, select COBOL from the Language drop-down list.
3. Select a Web application project template.

The main characteristics of a Web Application are:

• Project - the project file describes the files in your application and defines the project structure. It enables you to configure the project properties and add project dependencies so you can build multiple Web application projects as part of your application, and to temporarily exclude files from the build.

  Using a project file also means Visual Studio adds namespaces to pages, classes and controls.

• Compiling - you use MSBuild to compile and can customize it by adding pre- or post-build events. The output of the Web Application project is a single assembly for which you can add an assembly name and version.
• Deployment - you build the project on the development machine and only deploy the single output assembly to the production server which reduces the security risks. You use the Visual Studio deployment tools to deploy the assembly.